Tungu / Mia Zabelka / Stefan Strasser
The Confidence of One Swimming Against the Current
UK FMR RECORDS FMRCD707-0824 CD (2024)
Strong set of 17 short tracks, rich in improvisation and noise, from this trio brought together some time during the bleak years of the pandemic by the Ukrainian creator Tungu.
Very happy me to see the return of Mia Zabelka, our favourite maverick improvising violin player who has no fear of using electronics and voice work to convey her message, nor of jumping right into collaborations where some traditional improvisers would fear to tread – the more recent of these being with IcosTech, resulting in powerful and dense sprawls of digital noise and impassioned playing. On this album, she pushes her pacifist mode and human-rights conscience to the forefront, and plays her instrument with all the urgency you’d expect. Tungu is in fact Sergiy Senchuk and he could be reckoned as the “principal” player in the trio, and a lot of the record’s energy comes from the tribulations of his homeland during the Russian invasion; he wanted to express, in sound, the “spirit of defiance and perseverance”, and even if the futility of the struggle is encoded in the album’s title, the music makes plain that he – and the entire country, presumably – are in no danger of giving up any time soon.
Sergiy Senchuk contributes some bass playing, but his main addition to the collective statement is his field recordings, his samples, and his own voice. Hopefully, some of these real-world tape documents and vocal utterances were derived from Tungu’s own experiences and surroundings in his home town of Chernihiv, thereby bringing a core of authenticity and truth-telling to the otherwise free-form and near-abstract tones. Not that anyone could accuse the players – including the German musician Stefan Strasser on synths, guitars, and unhinged electronic sounds – of falling asleep or turning in hackneyed performances on these energetic experiments, whose conviction and determination is reflected in the three-way cross-pulling moments on certain tracks; it’s possible the three never met in the studio and instead sent their contributions singly and severally for the final assembly, but if so the method has worked to great effect, accurately and honestly conveying the chaos and sense of imminent dread that, we can only assume, is currently being endured by the citizens of this part of the world.
As usual, artists succeed where the media fail, giving us the unvarnished truth about current affairs in a direct, non-partisan way, untrammelled by political bias, and delivered in a form that can be understood by everyone with a pair of ears – and serving a message that can’t possibly be misunderstood. From 29th November 2024.